Carleton College
Northfield, MN |- Educational Institution
- Zero Net Energy Labs
- Sustainable Lab Design
A high efficiency Protector Fume Hood is surrounded by functional work spaces and natural light.
Anderson Hall was built to the highest standards to produce more energy than it consumes.
Anderson Hall can be seen in the background, under construction. Temporary spaces were made possible with Protector Echo Filtered Fume Hoods.
The building blocks of zero net energy laboratories are the filtered fume hoods and high efficiency fume hoods, seen here.
Thermal energy provides 70% of the annual heating and cooling energy for Anderson Hall at Carleton College.
Work spaces for fume producing chemicals surround traditional bench space in Anderson Hall.
Almost every seat in the class is adjacent to a fume hood, easing the foot traffic between lab and bench.
This classic edifice dominates the campus, a well known symbol of Carleton College.
Anderson Hall
When the leaders at Carleton College decided to undertake a huge step in their pursuit of LEED Platinum Certification—replacing their old science building with a new Integrated Science Center (also called Anderson Hall)—they had the needs of the students and as well as the college’s collective economic footprint in mind. The new complex, which is home to the science and math departments, includes and connects two existing buildings that got major facelifts: Olin Hall and Hulings Hall. The result? A ZNE (zero net energy) facility that not only supports integrated learning, but also serves as a model for other laboratory spaces seeking to reach zero net energy consumption.
With all these moving parts, however—and in aiming to not disrupt learning over the duration of this extensive renovation—the project had particular needs that focused on not only the sustainability of the technology chosen, but also its flexibility.
Challenge
Besides completing the project on a tight timeline, a primary challenge for Carleton College was to deliver a state of the art, energy-efficient Chemistry Building without disrupting the curriculum and scheduling of classes. This was particularly important for Carleton because the campus is small, and the number of existing sciences simply did not have capacity for potential overflow of displaced students.
Installation: Jul, 2016
Solution
The solution was to move chemistry completely outside of the building by converting biology labs into temporary chemistry labs. This allowed the general contractor to focus on the most noninvasive schedule for completion.
The conversion, however, wasn’t apples to apples: the existing biology lab did not have the required exhaust capacity to safely allow students and faculty to work within the space. Ducting new fume hoods would have been costly and time-consuming.
Carleton’s chemistry department worked with Labconco and Erlab to complete requisite chemical assessments and ensure another route would provide the safety and flexibility the situation warranted: Protector Echo Filtered Fume Hoods, delivered in phase one of the project. The conversion from biology lab to chemistry lab, then, was possible because the Echo hoods require no ducting and were within budget. The flexibility of the equipment, too, meant it wasn’t a band-aid solution. After the completion of phase two of the project, The Echo hoods from the temporary lab were used at various locations across campus, making the decision to go that route not only timely but also a long-term, energy-saving investment.
In phase two of the project, Labconco delivered Protector XStream Fume Hoods to Carleton. These hoods hail from the requisite family of fume hoods that, due to the range of applications performed in these spaces, are found in every functional chemistry laboratory on campuses around the country: ducted.
Benefits
A smart, tailored combination of high-efficiency ducted and filtered fume hoods (as well as other products with sustainable design, such as glassware washers) allowed the laboratory renovation at Carleton College to reach the covered ZNE status.
The approach led not only to energy (and thereby monetary) savings, but also construction flexibility and minimal disruption to the work of students and faculty.
